Deceptively simple, Ryokan's poems transcend artifice, presenting spontaneous expressions of pure Zen spirit. Like his contemporary Thoreau, Ryokan celebrates nature and the natural life, but his poems touch the whole range of human experience: joy and sadness, pleasure and pain, enlightenment and illusion, love and loneliness. This collection of translations reflects the full spectrum of Ryokan's spiritual and poetic vision, including Japanese haiku, longer folk songs, and Chinese-style verse. Fifteen ink paintings by Koshi no Sengai (1895-1958) complement these translations and beautifully depict the spirit of this famous poet.

    Ranging from joyous to elegiac, verses touch on love’s delights and follies with elliptical eloquence. Lovely to read aloud or reflect on silently. Photos of African artwork accompany the text.My heart is single and cannot be dividedAnd it is fastened on a single hope;Oh, you, who might be the moon!--Somali love song

    He in turn invited them to look for him in the sake parlors of the Pleasure Quarters. A Zen monk-poet-calligrapher-musician, he dared to write about the joys of erotic love, along with more traditional Zen themes. He was an eccentric and genius who dared to defy authority and despised corruption. Although he lived during times plagued by war, famine, rioting, and religious upheaval, his writing and music prevailed, influencing Japanese culture to this day.Stephen Berg is the Editor and founder of American Poetry Review.Also available by Stephen BergSteel CricketPB $16.00, 1-55659-075-X • CUSANew & Selected PoemsPB $12.00, 1-55659-043-1 • CUSA

    The poems range in tone from the spiritual longing of an isolated monk to the erotic ecstasy of a court princess—but share the extraordinary simplicity and luminosity of language that marks Kenneth Rexroth's verse style. An introduction by the poet and translator Sam Hamill, the editor of this collection, and short biographies of the poets are included. The Shambhala Library is a series of exquisitely designed and produced cloth editions of the world's spiritual and literary classics, both ancient and modern. Perfect for collecting or as gifts, each volume features a sewn binding, decorative endsheets, and a ribbon marker—a delightful-to-hold 4 ¼ x 6 ¾ trim size.

    S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, many other notables.

    The finished product is a document of a year’s worth of moments filled with joy, sorrow and unexpected beauty. The book y creates the sense that present moments do not just disappear and provides a visceral understanding of how these moments fit into the context of the rest of our lives.The short verses in Haiku Year stab and elate. They hint at both the transcendence and mediocrity of everyday life. The power of Michael Stipe’s southern, twilight drenched lyrics from early REM albums is present in the volume. Douglas A. Martin’s sparse yet descriptive prose gleams throughout. The thoughtful storytelling of Grant Lee Phillips is pared down to the simplest words to describe an instance.The Haiku Year is about the appreciation of small moments of beauty, ultimately adding up to the appreciation and respect not only for our individual lives but for all the lives that intersect with ours. The Haiku Year effortlessly urges readers to enjoy details and to let spare moments pierce through the numbness of everyday routine.

    The time before sleep acts as an invitation to reflect on the world's quieter movements—from gardens heavy after a first storm to the moon slipping into darkness in an eclipse—as well as on the subtle but relentless passage of time. Insomnia embodies Linda Pastan's graceful and iconic voice, both lucid and haunting.

    Staring with the Classical Period (645-1604 A.D.), characterized by the wanka and tanka styles,followed by haiku poets of the Tokugawa period (to 1867), the subsequent modern tanka and haiku poets,and including the contemporary school of free verse—Women Poets of Japan records twelve hundred years of poetic accomplishment. Included are biographical notes on the individual poets, an essay on Japanese women and literature, and a table of historical periods.

    Animals populate its pages—owl, groundhog, fox, each with its own inimitable survival skills—and the poet who so meticulously observes their behaviors has accumulated a lifetime’s worth of skills herself: she too has survived. The power of these extraordinary poems lies in their recognition that all our experience is ultimately useless—that human beings are at every moment beginners, facing the earth as if for the first time. "Don’t you think I’m doing better," asks the first poem. "You got sick you got well you got sick," says the last.Eschewing punctuation, forgoing every symmetry, the poems hurl themselves forward, driven by an urgent need to speak. Headwaters is a book of wisdom that refuses to be wise, a book of fresh beginnings by an American poet writing at the height of her powers.

    The 1,000 poems (out of a total of more than 4,500) in this famous selection were chosen by a distinguished scholarly committee based on their poetic excellence, their role in revealing the Japanese national spirit and character, and their cultural and historical significance. The acclaimed translations artfully preserve the simplicity and direct quality of the originals, and encompass an enormous range of human emotions and experiences. Text is in English only

    Most famously, they use natural imagery to make Zen-like observations about reality. However, as this anthology reveals, there’s much more to haiku than cherry blossoms and waning moons: the verse included here is frequently erotic, funny, rude, and mischievous. Adam Kern has travelled throughout Japan to gather the best and most important examples of the genre, and his vivid and engaging translations form the basis of the Penguin Book of Haiku.For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

    With Native Son he gave us Bigger Thomas, still one of the most provocative and controversial characters in fiction. With Black Boy he offered a candid and searing depiction of racism and poverty in America. And now, forty years after his death, he has bestowed us with one of the finest collections of haiku in American literature.Wright became enamored of haiku at the end of his life, and in this strict, seventeen-syllable form he discovered another way of looking at the world. He rendered images of nature and humanity that raised questions and revealed strikingly fresh perspectives. The publication of this collection is not only one of the greatest posthumous triumphs of American letters but also a final testament to the noble spirit and enduring artistry of Richard Wright.

    . . [Seidel’s] poems are a triumph of cosmic awe in the face of earthly terror.” —Hillel Italie, USA TodayFrederick Seidel has been called many things. A “transgressive adventurer,” “a demonic gentleman,” a “triumphant outsider,” “a great poet of innocence,” and “an example of the dangerous Male of the Species,” just to name a few. Whatever you choose to call him, one thing is certain: “he radiates heat” (The New Yorker).Now add to that: the poet of aging and decrepitude.Widening Income Inequality, Seidel’s new poetry collection, is a rhymed magnificence of sexual, historical, and cultural exuberance, a sweet and bitter fever of Robespierre and Obamacare and Apollinaire, of John F. Kennedy and jihadi terror and New York City and Italian motorcycles. Rarely has poetry been this true, this dapper, or this dire. Seidel is “the most poetic of the poets and their leader into hell.”

    A beloved and gifted artist, Ashbery takes his place beside Whitman, Dickinson, Stevens, and Hart Crane in the canon of great American poets. With Quick Question, a new collection of poems published in time for his 85th birthday, John Ashbery proves that his creative power has only grown stronger with age.

    Beginning with "Riot Act," a monologue about the Los Angeles uprising in April 1992, Ai explored racial and sexual politics through the voices of diverse characters.